Elon Musk warns that AI is ‘one of the biggest risks’ to civilization during the rise of ChatGPT

Twitter boss Elon Musk warned on Wednesday that the rampant development of artificial intelligence poses a potential existential threat to humanity as ChatGPT’s popularity skyrockets.

The billionaire mogul urged governments to develop clear safety rules for AI technology as he discussed ChatGPT development and other advances during a virtual keynote at the World Government Summit in Dubai.

“One of the biggest risks to the future of civilization is AI. But AI has both a positive and a negative connotation — it has great promise, great opportunity, but also great danger,” said Musk, co-founder of ChatGPT firm OpenAI.

“I mean, you look at, say, the discovery of nuclear physics. You had nuclear power, but also nuclear bombs,” he added.

Musk’s remarks came as critics raised questions about ChatGPT’s shortcomings, such as its tendency to display bias or give out factually incorrect information.

In one instance, ChatGPT refused to write a New York Post-style article about Hunter Biden, but agreed when asked to write in the voice of CNN.

In recent months, the AI-powered chatbot has become widely known for its ability to generate high-quality human responses to user queries.

During his speech in Dubai, Musk stressed that he no longer has a stake in OpenAI and is not involved in its activities. He said he left the board of directors of OpenAI after becoming one of the first investors along with his former PayPal partner Peter Thiel.

“I think ChatGPT showed people how advanced AI has become. AI has been improving for some time now; it just didn’t have a user interface that would be accessible to most people,” Musk said. “What ChatGPT did was just add an accessible user interface to AI technology that’s been around for a few years now.”

Last month, Microsoft announced plans to invest $10 billion in OpenAI as rival tech giant Google struggles to develop a ChatGPT competitor called “Bard”.

“Honestly, I think we need to regulate AI security,” said Musk, who also founded Tesla, SpaceX and Neurolink. “Think of any technology that potentially poses a risk to people, for example if it’s airplanes, cars or medicine, we have regulators that oversee the public safety of cars, airplanes and medicine. I think we should have a similar set of regulators for artificial intelligence because I think it’s actually more of a risk to society.”

In the past, Musk has been open about his concerns about AI technology.

Last March, he named “AI mismanagement” as one of the three biggest threats facing humanity, along with falling birth rates and the rise of what he called “religious extremism.”

Musk also spoke about his plans for Twitter during the Dubai summit.

The billionaire said he expects to find a CEO to replace him at Twitter “probably by the end of this year.” He bought the social media platform for $44 billion last October.